Fantastic Four Reboot To Get A Touch-Up From Dark Shadows Screenwriter

Writer Seth Grahame-Smith has not had the greatest run in Hollywood thus far in his brief career. The adaptation of his book Pride & Prejudice and Zombies continues to be stuck deep in the bowels of development hell, and both Dark Shadows (which was based on a script he wrote) and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire (which was based on another one of his novels) were both disappointments to critics and at the box office. And yet now he's been hired to polish one of the biggest projects currently in development.

The Hollywood Reporter has learned that 20th Century Fox has hired Grahame-Smith to do some work on the upcoming Fantastic Four reboot that is currently getting prepared for a 2015 release date. The news about the film, which is reportedly one of the highest priority projects at the studio, comes right on the heels of reports from late last week that said X-Men: First Class director Matthew Vaughn has boarded as one of the producers. The author-turned-screenwriter will be touching up the script by first time writer Jeremy Slater. Josh Trank, who hit it big with Chronicle last year, is directing the film.

The trade notes that the new cinematic version of the superhero team with be "taking a grounded superhero and sci-fi approach" and that there are plans to incorporate many more elements from the comics and deep mythology, which includes Doctor Doom, Galactus, and the alien races known as the Kree and the Skrull.